iwantareferendum: are they censoring their own poll or have they made up the results?

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd March 2008 - 6:21 pm

A curiosity from the “I want a referendum” campaign. Their news release today claims:

I Want a Referendum today releases an ICM poll of 1,000 people who voted Liberal Democrat at the last General Election … The poll also finds that if only one question is to be asked then Liberal Democrat voters would prefer a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

And yet the full tables from ICM contain no such question, which as far as I can see leaves only two possibilities:

a. They’ve made up or got horribly wrong their own poll results in their own press release, or

b. They’re keeping hidden some of the poll answers (though, as the press release has mentioned them under the British Polling Council rules, ICM should release them).

Anyway, if you want to see poll results which do really answer the “what sort of referendum would you want?” question, see the results of the poll from MORI issued by the Liberal Democrats today. They show the public in favour by 2:1 of having an in/out referendum rather than a Lisbon Treaty referendum.

6 Comments

Eastender 3rd Mar '08 - 7:05pm

I got polled by ICM over the weekend and they definitely did ask the question…
Dave H 3rd Mar '08 - 7:18pm

A shame we can’t have both, but the boy Clegg has scuppered that possibility despite a majority of Lib Dem in the real world wanting him to honour a manifesto commitment. And please don’t tell me that the treaty is totally different to the constitution nobody believes a word of that no matter what is said in public.
Mark Pack 4th Mar '08 - 8:12am

Eastender: When this was queried with I Want A Referendum yesterday, they weren’t able to produce any poll question which backs up the claim in their news release. I think you were either asked a different question (can you remember the exact wording?) or it was a different poll.
AP 4th Mar '08 - 10:02am

I think by cutting and pasting only that you are taking the words out of context.

The press release actually says:

“The poll also finds that if only one question is to be asked then Liberal Democrat voters would prefer a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. In a MORI poll released today by the Liberal Democrats, just over half (54%) of voters support a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. But the ICM poll of Liberal Democrats shows that over two thirds (67%) support a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.”

If you actually reproduce the text in full it makes it clear what is really being said. Cutting out of context is very dangerous!
Mark Pack 4th Mar '08 - 10:20am

No it doesn’t. Their claim is very specific – that their poll (“the poll” not “someone else’s poll”) shows something, when in fact their poll doesn’t show it at all.

They then go on to mix apples and oranges with a comparison between figures about voters and about Liberal Democrat supporters (only). Quoting the rest of the paragraph just makes even clearer what a fast one they’re pulling.

The bottom line is this: their press released claimed their poll showed something which it actually never asked.
Martin Pantling 5th Mar '08 - 5:51pm

All of this is irrelevant Mark, because Dave H is unfortunately on the mark.

Our MPs may not line up to lose their front bench posts, but the fact remains that most people don’t believe or accept the line that the Treaty is radically different from the proposed Constitution.